


to be human

by aegious



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, No Plot/Plotless, they are just k, they are just kissing my dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aegious/pseuds/aegious
Summary: Wataru wants to be known, in this moment, to Shu. He lets Shu’s hands touch him, feel him, learn him, and he stays firmly in place instead of slipping through the thin cracks between Shu’s fingers like the intangible mystery he usually is, like the god he represents. Here, he is neither god nor doll nor any other venerated thing. He is Hibiki Wataru, a man, a person.
Relationships: Hibiki Wataru/Itsuki Shuu
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	to be human

**Author's Note:**

> guess who wrote this in one delirious sitting last night and swore up and down she'd never post it, but is still posting it because she's lost control of her life and self-respect
> 
> i just think it's a crime that there's only 10 watashu fics in the tag ok

Shu’s fingers tremble as they work their way up Wataru’s sides. His skin is warm, soft, so very human. It’s nothing like the porcelain of a doll. When he digs his trimmed nails into the flesh, it gives, creates little valleys under the pressure. When Wataru gasps, his chest rises and falls.

Wataru’s hair hangs loose around them, pooling endlessly at Shu’s waist. The strands form a curtain through which early morning rays of light stream through and cast golden bars across his body, across the sheets beneath them. He can’t remember the last time he saw Wataru with his hair down. In this light, he looks vulnerable—a jester caught without his mask.

When he smiles, there are no pretenses. No barriers, no walls between them, keeping them apart. They are simply Wataru and Shu, old friends who survived together, because they were together.

Shu likes this poetic thing between them.

Shu’s hands push ever upward, his fingers so very sensitive to every curve as he traces Wataru, commits him to memory. Wataru’s T-shirt, loose and baggy and not for just any eyes to see, bunches around Shu’s wrists, lays there limply like a weight, an obstacle trying to hide Wataru away, keep him unseen.

But Wataru wants to be known, in this moment, to Shu. He lets Shu’s hands touch him, feel him, learn him, and he stays firmly in place instead of slipping through the thin cracks between Shu’s fingers like the intangible mystery he usually is, like the god he represents. Here, he is neither god nor doll nor any other venerated thing. He is Hibiki Wataru, a man, a person.

Wataru takes a hand, brushes it along Shu’s jawline. It’s gentle, coaxing, as if he’s leading Shu down a path from which he can never return—a path he’d already taken long before now.

His legs clench around Shu’s hips where he straddles him, the shameless thing. The hand continues down his neck, across his collarbone with a featherlight touch, down to the first button of his night shirt. Those skillful fingers play with the button, teasing him, waiting for him to give the go-ahead.

But Shu can’t possibly speak now, not when his throat is dry and his heart is stuttering in an incredulous staccato.

“Did you sleep well?” Wataru’s whisper is playful, a light breeze caught on the sunbeams that trace Shu’s ear. Shu watches the shape of Wataru’s mouth, the perfect pink lips that form each syllable with such grace and eloquence that Shu has to touch him again, feel the warmth against his own skin, feel the way he’s very much _alive,_ to make sure once again that Wataru is not a doll.

That perfect mouth forms a smile again, one he’s seen on countless dolls, but this one is full of life, of love, of affection that not even Mademoiselle can give him. It’s flawless and flawed all at once, the stains of human imperfection coloring the lips in a quivering pink, a taut red, a bleeding color that can never keep just one shape. A fluid, ever-changing smile that is so much more than hand-crafted, something too natural to be artisan.

Shu’s very human lungs squeeze in his chest even as Wataru breathes in, and it feels like he really has stolen his breath away.

Wataru leans in, the bars of light shifting and warping as his hair gathers around them. “May I kiss you?”

The question reminds Shu that he never answered the first—or perhaps he did, and this is just a follow-up. Of course, Wataru already has his answer. He always does, because he who wears a mask can see beneath the surface of everyone else, a master at reading people’s intentions and thoughts to an almost supernatural extent. He has far too much practice.

Shu gives him far too much practice.

And he wants it, more than anything he wants it, to feel those perfectly imperfect, totally human lips against his. He doesn’t respond, lets Wataru read him like the open book he’s become, vulnerable and helpless under that glittering gaze. Because Wataru knows, of course he knows.

Shu’s elbows burrow into the sheets beside him as Wataru falls cleanly, slowly forward. It’s careful, as if he’s not sure of his own expertise on all things Shu, as if he doesn’t have Shu wrapped entirely around his finger.

They’re so close now, but Wataru stops mere centimeters from Shu’s lips, his breath another reminder that he’s alive. It’s warm against Shu’s cheeks and it sends chills down his spine, and Shu stares into Wataru’s half-lidded eyes, searching for scratched paint in the irises but only finding a spark of, of _something,_ of joy and excitement and myriad emotions that Shu can’t name because he’s never bothered to care for such trivial things.

He stays there, hovering above him for a few moments longer, teasing him and tempting him with those very trivial emotions, the ones welling up inside him because Wataru’s simple touch can coax forth feeling Shu has never dreamed of, not when those dreams are blank stares and beautiful dresses and lovely, perfect curls and painted-on lips.

Wataru is none of those things, nothing like his dreams he so lauds.

Still, he digs his elbows into the sheets and pushes himself up, closes the gap between him because _of course_ Wataru is going to make him work for it, because Shu may not be able to read Wataru as well as Wataru can read him but he _knows_ him, knows his tricks and his games and they’ve been through this all before.

And finally he gets to taste Wataru, feel those lips on his own, both so utterly human, so utterly flawed. The wrinkle of skin and the slight give when Shu presses harder, the way Wataru’s mouth opens and catches Shu’s bottom lip between his teeth, the way he nibbles gently, defiant ‘til the end, always needing to have the upper hand. It’s something that can never be replicated, something that can only exist in this moment alone.

Shu gasps, and Wataru smiles into the kiss, his lips stretching tight—so much emotion that Shu can’t keep up with.

Wataru pulls away first, pulling Shu’s lip with him until his teeth release him with a snap and a wide grin that crinkles his eyes. Shu wants to chase after him, but his arms give out and he falls back onto the bed, bouncing once as the springs catch him.

Wataru runs a hand through Shu’s hair, so short compared to the waves falling like gossamer thread over his shoulders and across Shu’s chest. Shu leans into the touch, follows the path as Wataru goes up, over, and back down, resting his fingers so softly on Shu’s cheek, as if he, himself, were a porcelain doll on the verge of shattering.

“Such a pretty thing,” Wataru coos, and Shu wants to protest, wants to giggle, wants to hear it again. His chest tightens. “I am incredibly fond of you, dear Shu.”

Shu can’t find the words to respond. He wants Wataru to keep talking, to keep speaking with that silver tongue, so expertly trained in the words he spins like Natsume’s magic, like his own magic.

Instead, he runs his hands across Wataru’s shoulders, feeling them move under his grip, autonomous and alive with boyish giggles that shake his entire frame. Wataru takes the hand from Shu’s hair, presses it against his lips, shifts out of the way so that Shu’s touch is no longer tickling him.

The breath Shu exhales is filled with an emotion he can see but can’t name, bright and warm in the morning light. Wataru appears to see it, too, although he surely has a word for it.

He leans back down and peppers kisses along Shu’s forehead, along his temple. His bangs tickle Shu’s cheeks, and when he pulls away again he doesn’t repeat those words of love. He doesn’t need to, their very essence floating around them, dancing on the sunbeams, dripping off Wataru’s hair, clinging to their lips.

“You…” he musters at last, his breathless response falling flat compared to the sparkling silver of Wataru’s words, Wataru’s everything, “are tolerable.”

The smile Wataru gives him is bright and gentle, penetrating deep inside Shu and drawing out the unspoken feeling within him. He is known, wants to be known, and Wataru knows him, sees him, understands him through all the silence around them.

Shu understands, in moments like these, that humanity—fickle, inconstant, imperfect—is beautiful, that the humanity of his very own Hibiki Wataru is something that can’t be created, only lived.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway i don't feel like i've consumed enough enstars content to have nailed their personalities perfectly, so i'll keep learning and relearning these characters until i'm satisfied ^^
> 
> until then i'm on [twitter!!](https://twitter.com/aegious)


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